How To Catch Pests
by Arctic Banana
Summary: Tyrael found out about Azmodan's plan to create flying demons to better kill angels with. To combat this, he figures a few traps are in order. Unfortunately it would seem demons aren't the only ones prone to falling into traps...


_So I decided to play the first Diablo after finding it with my games during a move and upon booting it up, I discovered that I apparently have a save under the name of "Shambamalicious". I like to think that's what the warrior character's name actually was, now. Evidently King Leoric had his first son during his hippie period..._

_A typical conversation with my sister: "So apparently the demon hellflyers were Azmodan's answer to an angel's wings." "They'll figure out how to outsmart them eventually. Tyrael will probably put up flypaper and watch them all get stuck to it." "But what if the other angels get stuck to it?" "He'll probably warn everyone to look out for them. Everyone except Imperius." And thus this was born._

* * *

Auriel turned her head in confusion as she looked around at the strips of paper dangling everywhere from every surface imaginable. It looked as though there were yellow streamers hanging from the undersides of every balcony, the branch of every tree in her garden, and from the tops of every archway. She stopped to examine some strips that were stuck to a wall as they billowed sideways as though caught in a breeze and reached out to touch one, pulling back in surprise when it stuck to her hand. It made a sticky, ripping sort of noise as she withdrew from it and she had to put up a bit of a struggle to get it to let go as the sticky substance on it was quite strong and had gotten tangled with her fingers.

"What in Heaven...?" she said as she leaned in closer to look at it further.

Auriel noticed Tyrael's head pop up from behind a stairway. "Since you're here, you might as well grab some and start helping," he said when he saw her. "Here..." He approached her and handed her what looked like several rolls of the sticky tape. "Be careful with it. I already got both my wings stuck together." He turned around and began sticking the tape to the side of a column, his wings, twisted up and stuck to the sticky paper, now visible to Auriel.

"Tyrael, you're the one who's been putting these up?" Auriel asked. "What are they for?"

"As I believe the human saying goes, a little birdy told me that Azmodan's been engineering flying demons to hunt and kill us," Tyrael explained. "The humans use this stuff to catch flying pests all the time. I thought I'd put some up just in case."

"What threat are the demons to us here?" Auriel inquired. She examined the flypaper and managed to get it once more stuck to her fingers. She shook her hand until she somehow managed to shake it free.

"You never know," Tyrael shrugged. "One might get in some day. Better safe than sorry."

"The demons aren't the only ones that can fly. What if one of us flies into them?"

"Just warn everyone to watch where they're flying."

Auriel placed the flypapers she was holding onto a nearby bench and stood behind him, carefully attempting to untangle his wings from the glue traps. She found he had somehow managed to get three of the traps tangled together within the tendrils of his luminescent wings.

Tyrael flinched when the tape pulled. Wings were surprisingly sensitive for something made of pure divine energy. "Ow! Careful!"

"How did you manage to do this?" Auriel asked. She ripped two of them out like a particularly sticky bandage, causing him to shriek in an embarrassingly high pitch from the pain. One of his wings was free, but the other was still tangled in the remaining trap. She rubbed the ends of his free wing to try to ease some of the pain a little.

"I accidentally flew into them," Tyrael replied.

"Imagine that," Auriel said sarcastically.

They both heard a shriek even more high pitched and girlish than Tyrael's own. Their heads snapped to the side towards the direction of the sound. Auriel took advantage of the momentary distraction and yanked the remaining strip of flypaper from Tyrael's wing, causing him to jump from the pain. He gingerly rubbed the sore tendrils, flexing them to make sure they were still capable of full movement.

"Who's screaming over there?" Auriel asked.

"I hope that's not Itherael!" Tyrael said. They both rushed to the source of the sound and found a certain archangel thrashing about tangled in several strands of flypaper. "Oh thank Anu, it's just Imperius," Tyrael sighed with relief upon discovering it wasn't his friend.

"Who put these glue strips all over the place?!" Imperius demanded.

Imperius' wings were even more impossibly tangled from the myriad flypapers that were dangling from the underside of the tree branches than Tyrael's own had been. His constant struggling got the rest of his body twisted and tangled within the varying lengths of the sticky demon traps until he could barely do more than wiggle while dangling upside down.

"Oh dear...this isn't good..." Auriel said. She put her hand to her mouth and watched Imperius continuing his wriggling up in the trees. "We have to get him down."

"Sure, we'll get him down, but first..." Tyrael flew off, carefully avoiding the strategically placed sticky paper this time, and disappeared for a moment. Auriel wondered where he'd gone and what he was doing before he returned a few moments later with Itherael at his side. The Angel of Fate somehow failed to see the sight before him coming and stared on at Imperius in shock. "There! See? They do work!"

"How does something like this even happen?!" Itherael asked. He and Tyrael couldn't help but laugh at Imperius' misfortune at having flown into the flypaper.

"Stop laughing!" Imperius shouted at them both angrily. "This isn't funny!" Auriel turned around to hide the fact that she too was giggling despite the fact that she knew better. Imperius grumbled to himself and couldn't believe that even Auriel had betrayed him in this moment of need.

"Do you need any help getting down, Imperius?" Itherael asked once he managed to regain his composure.

"No! I needn't any help from you!" Imperius snapped.

"Are you sure?" Auriel asked with concern.

"I can get down from here myself!"

"You look a bit tangled there. You're _sure _you can get down on your own?" Tyrael inquired.

"Tyrael, you can go to-!"

"Imperius," Auriel interrupted. Imperius grumbled and struggled in the tangles, further entrapping himself within the confines of the glue traps.

Itherael tapped his chin, watching Imperius' struggle with interest. "Well at least we know the traps work as intended."

"Yeah, if Imperius doesn't fly into and tear them all down first," Tyrael pointed out.

"This-this is _your_ fault?!" Imperius said angrily.

Tyrael moved in closer. He circled Imperius, examining him from every angle, determining how badly stuck he was, giving a paper a tug to see how badly knotted up in Imperius' burning wings it was, and figured without help, he'd be stuck there for quite some time. "Since you can't punch me right now, yes. I'll own up to hanging up the traps." He made a mental note to hang several of them up in his usual stomping grounds to keep Imperius out. "Are you certain that you don't want us to help you?"

"I can get out of this myself, thank you very much!"

"Okay, but just remember that we offered to help when you're still dangling upside down from a tree come next millennia..."

They had to hand it to him, he held out pretty long like that, almost half a human day in fact. Imperius desperately sought to free himself without help, not wanting to risk hurting his pride by admitting he'd need help from Tyrael or anyone to get out of his bonds. After a while a small crowd of angels gathered to come and stare at him and at one point Malthael stumbled upon them, stared for a moment, and then turned around and left the way he came, shaking his head all the while. It took the loosening of the strips that kept him dangling from the tree branches and a painful crash to the ground for him to finally admit defeat.

"Okay...I think I might actually need help..." Imperius mumbled.

Tyrael sat in a laid back position on a bench, watching the struggle and fall with amusement, when he heard Imperius' faint voice. "I'm sorry Imperius, I didn't catch that. You might want to speak up."

Imperius glared at him darkly. "I said I need your help!" he replied with a strong hint of reluctance in his tone.

"You sure? You seemed pretty confident that you could free yourself earlier."

"Tyrael, if I ever get out of this-!"

Auriel and Itherael watched him attempt to wriggle across the ground towards Tyrael. They both wondered what he planned on doing should he actually catch up to him. How he still had enough energy to move after thrashing about for so long was beyond them.

"Relax, Imperius. We'll get you out of that," Tyrael promised.

Imperius immediately stopped his wriggling and lay motionless on the ground, save for his eyes following Tyrael with a distrustful look as he stepped closer. He looked a little like an angelic mummy wrapped up on the ground in flypaper.

"If you don't emerge from that as a gorgeous butterfly, I think I'll be disappointed," Auriel said as they examined Imperius' tightly wrapped form.

Tyrael gave a sharp tug to a cluster of sticky tape that bound Imperius' wings in an impossible to discern tangle. Imperius flinched from the painful motion. Tyrael then tested how tight the flypaper was wrapped around the rest of Imperius' body by giving it a yank and seeing if they moved at all. His hands stuck to the traps and made a tearing noise when he pulled them back from the tape.

"You're stuck pretty tight, Imperius," Tyrael said observantly.

"I am," Imperius replied impatiently. "Now are you going to untangle this or not?"

"Hmm..." Tyrael sat back thoughtfully. He reached towards a low hanging tree branch and yanked a strip dangling down overhead. "We'll untangle you. Eventually."

Before Imperius had a chance to argue, Tyrael managed to shove his fingers up underneath his helmet and plastered the glue strip over his hidden mouth. He stood up, leaving a furious Imperius thrashing on the ground, his angry screaming muffled by the tape.

"He's going to be really angry with us when we let him go..." Itherael pointed out.

"Yes. Yes he is," Tyrael agreed. "Which means I plan on being very far away from here when you both finally do it..."

* * *

_Wasn't going to post this after several less than amusing responses I've gotten after posting pretty much anything that wasn't Transformers as of late (there is so much negativity on this site, let me tell ya), but then I figured to hell with it. Writing makes me happy and I like sharing what I write, so why not? Even if I re-read this later and realize it's not as funny as it was when I was sleep deprived and on my third can of Mountain Dew, which I probably will do at some point, oh well. I had fun._


End file.
